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Florida transgender residents will no longer be allowed to change the listed gender on their driver’s licenses or state ID, according to a memo from the Florida Department of Highway Safety and Motor Vehicles.
In the memo, addressed to county tax collectors, the Florida Department of Highway Safety and Motor Vehicles Deputy Executive Director Robert Kynoch states that "misrepresenting one’s gender, understood as sex, on a driver's license constitutes fraud" and those with licenses that represent their gender identity could be subjected to "criminal and civil penalties, including cancellation, suspension, or revocation of his or her driver license."
Kynoch wrote in the memo that gender is synonymous with sex. Major national medical organizations, including the National Institutes of Health (NIH) and the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention, define gender and sex differently.
Sex is defined as a "multidimensional biological construct" of sex traits, according to the NIH, which defines gender as the "social and cultural expectations about status, characteristics, and behavior as they are associated with certain sex traits."
Florida residents were previously allowed to submit a court order for a name change or a letter from a physician on gender transition treatment to get their gender marker changed, according to the National Center for Transgender Equality.